In the poem,“Every Human to Another” Countee Cullen introduces the idea that sorrow and injustice faced is not meant to be kept concealed, but rather shared collectively with people who can connect to similar hardships. When Cullen wrote this poem in 1935, many people were faced with adversity, with the Great Depression and the still present lack of racial acceptance. Cullen uses figurative language to explain a symbolic unity that was needed in the country at the time. Cullen writes with similes like, “your grief and mine/Must intertwine/Like sea and river,/Be fused and mingle”(lines 7-10) this is a prominent because he relates the rivers to people and they come together with their grief and create the symbolic ocean, which can be interpreted